


city on cigarette

by winterpolis



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, birthday gift, not quite maxicest, something different for a change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-26 18:56:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3860998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterpolis/pseuds/winterpolis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She is a whole goddamned universe, wrapped in everything glorious and wonderful. She is precious but she is not fragile. She is strong and her scars breathe stories into mine. She isn’t just one pane of the window for me; she’s a whole door of possibilities. Happy possibilities. Wherever she is, there I’d follow. Because there is a part of her in me, and I in her. Always. And besides, there is more beauty and fragility in the prospect of something so collective, so whole, slowly being destroyed by something it holds dear."</p>
            </blockquote>





	city on cigarette

**Author's Note:**

> hello, everyone! this is my first time posting over at ao3, so thanks for checking this out. this isn't exactly maxicest, but it's definitely a pietro x wanda fic. by the way, anyone else think that aaron johnson and lizzie olsen did a fantastic job portraying the maximoffs on screen? and am i the only one that ships them irl?
> 
> reviews are love!

_FOR SAMANTHA_

happiest of birthday to you, my darling.

thank you for giving me more grace than i deserve.

 

*

 

_On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux._

One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eyes.

_Antoine de Saint-Exupéry_

_*_

 

Observation, he’d always thought, was a crucial key to unlocking the most difficult of mysteries. A careful attention to detail by the keenest eye could pick out the most mundane and unnoticed detail that could very well be the last missing link to discovering the truth. He lived by the rule of observation; and to him, it goes without saying that observation can get one very far in life.

 

As a man constantly surrounded by mysteries and secrets himself, Steve Rogers was indeed no stranger to observation. In fact, it had become his second nature over the years—an instinct of sorts that has helped, amused, and taught him throughout the years. Being an observer had shown him a lot of things, some of which were a delight, while others were of a nature he wished he’d rather not have discovered at all. Nevertheless, it was because of that nature of observing the world around him and all of its inhabitants that he inadvertently first found himself stumbling upon and unraveling the mystery of the Maximoff twins.

 

Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, known to the rest of the world as Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, were in and of themselves a mystery. Although he knew the fundamental details about them after training and living with them at Headquarters for a while now—devastated and lost orphans, gifted with super powers and begrudgingly good looks (although he’d never admit it out loud), victims of bitterness that spearheaded their thirst for revenge-turned-redemption, and as close as siblings can be (that special bond could never be missed, any stranger within a few feet of them could easily tell you that)—he never really knew _who_ they were. Granted, none of the Avengers truly knew each other thoroughly, he, however, still liked to make the effort to at least be on friendly terms with everyone, and that meant unraveling the mysteries that lay beneath their saviors-of-the-world identities—their _true_ identities that were set aside and apart from their superhero masks and suits.

 

After the Avengers had temporarily and partly disassembled and he was left with Romanoff to shape up the “new recruits” as they’d taken to calling the new additions to team, Steve set it for himself to understand who the Maximoffs truly were, if only so he could be comfortable with them in the battlefield—and if he were being truly honest, because he was _bored_. Over the course of the months following the wreckage that was Ultron, things began to die down and life began to gear back into its old routines. Although the world never ran out of new villains to spur out, no new world-endangering missions truly presented themselves, and training could only take up so much of his time. And so, as a detour from his boredom, Steve made the Maximoffs his new personal mission, choosing to put his plan into immediate action.

 

He started out with keeping a safe distance, observing from afar. A casual nod whenever he crossed paths with the twins in HQ, a simple hi or hello at the dining table, a helpful tip in the middle of training. He needed to build the trust bridge first before confidently crossing it, after all. There were also times in which he’d remind himself that he had to be careful to guard his thoughts whenever he was around Wanda, despite the knowledge that she wouldn’t truly get into his thoughts if it weren’t necessary. He’d discovered after an embarrassing mishap that she, in actuality, disliked breaching others’ privacy. Still, he’d reasoned, it was better to be cautious than to risk having his intentions played out into the light and risk being called a stalker. He was _not._ He was merely curious.

 

It took a while for him to get the twins to even crack a smile in his direction; but once they started showing signs of at least trusting him a little, he took the chance and decided to begin engaging them in short discussions to keep the ball rolling. He would bring up little things like the weather, choice of weapons, and suits of armor. After a week of trying the whole “small talk” approach, Steve realized two things. One, that he was running out of casual topics to bring up; and two, that a part of the reason why his conversations with them were always so vague was not because they were as cold and aloof as he had originally pinned them out to be, but rather because they were always on a world of their own, slightly distant but always present. He supposed it was just the way they were—years of living on the streets, shuffling from one jail cell to another, and being experimented upon could only allow you to be so amiable. No problem, he’d occasionally tell himself after yet another awkward halt to their short conversations, it would only be a matter of time before he would earn their full trust.

 

By the time autumn rolled around and the weather was starting to decline, Steve had already picked up on several of the twins’ quirks and tendencies. They would, he noted, eat meals with the rest of the team and make polite conversation throughout its duration; and although they were closely huddled next to each other and slightly distant from the rest of the diners, he took note that they were slowly lowering their guard with each meal that took place. They would train, either separately or during the daily group grind, opting to build up on their physical prowess and strength rather than always relying on their superpowers at all times. There would, after all, come a day wherein their powers would be used against them, and they needed to take every precaution they could to ensure that when that day comes, they wouldn’t be found helpless. There was no use in sugarcoating the perils of the world they lived in, after all.

 

Steve also noted that the twins would occasionally help Maria with paperwork, as for some reason the two enjoyed it—although, perhaps, the paper airplanes and origami pieces that littered the former SHIELD agent’s desk after an hour or so of “helping” was proof that there was still an inner child in them trying to live in a world that deprived them of a happy childhood. It seemed that neither liked spending an extended time apart from each other; where one went, the other was sure to follow sooner or later. He attributed it to what was, according to Romanoff (who had, for some unexplainable reason, become great friends with Wanda, and was the only person whom the Scarlet Witch opened up and whom Pietro didn’t seem to want to pound within an inch of his life whenever she talked to his sister), how the twins felt that they didn’t belong with anyone or anywhere except with each other, perhaps because of childhood trauma or that which set them apart from everyone else—their unnatural capabilities. He supposed it was because of that that the twins found it hard to let their guard down, but he had yet to give up hope that he would be able to breach their tough shells one day.

 

*

 

As the months wore on and the days began to bleed into each other in familiar routines and chatter, he began to notice something rather odd about the twins’ relationship. He couldn’t pinpoint what exactly made it so odd, but he was sure that there was something about their relationship that he was aware of now, after months of observation, that he hadn’t noticed before. What it was, however, he couldn’t say for sure for now.

 

He knew it wasn’t the heightened awareness to each other—any pair of siblings could easily attest to that; and besides, an article he’d once read online theorized that twin siblings had an uncanny sensitivity to each other’s needs. It wasn’t the way they could communicate with each other with just one glance, either—the rest of the team easily relied on that in urgent missions that required silence and stealth. In fact, it wasn’t any of the things that were so obvious to the eye, Steve finally concluded one morning as he watched Pietro, shaggy hair finally cut short and naturally black once more, drop a quick kiss on Wanda’s jaw as he walked past where she sat on a stool, her hands curled around a steaming mug of coffee that rested upon the kitchen island, almost as if unconsciously and out of habit. It was then that he was convinced that their mystery lay in clear daylight as it was the little things that went unnoticed in the excitement and activities of the day.

 

After that, he found it easier to tune into the twins’ movements, and he slowly came to realize that perhaps the Maximoffs weren’t twins at all. It was absurd, he’d realized that; but the more he watched them, the more his thoughts were cemented. At first, he found the thought too far-fetched. Pietro and Wanda anything _but_ twins? No. That couldn’t be true. But the more he observed and the more he got to know them, the more the thought sounded convincing and not too impossible. There was definitely something there that wouldn’t be present if they were anything but siblings.

Steve pinpointed it to a lot of things, whatever _it_ was. It was in the way he glanced at her at the dinner table when he thought no one was looking; it was in the way she smiled before burying herself further into his arms as they sat down and watched the occasional movie with the rest of the team on Fridays; it was in the way his fingers found themselves attached to her hair in the most quiet of times; it was in the way she had cradled his head after he’d taken a beating in one of their training sessions when Romanoff had taken out her anger on him after a nasty fight with Barton the previous night. And suddenly, for the first time since he set out on his mission to unravel the Maximoff Mystery, he felt like an intruder into their lives—an intruder who couldn’t stop searching for answers to so many questions.

 

*

 

The opportunity finally presented itself to have his questions answered one morning as he sat down at breakfast with Pietro, who had finally found himself to be at ease with the rest of the team along with his sister, so much so that they had began to comfortably open up. It was just the two of them at the table—Barton was off on a mission somewhere, Budapest again perhaps; Fury and Maria were busy at the main office trying to keep tabs on Dr. Banner and his experiments; Thor in deep discussion regarding the Infinity Stones with the Vision somewhere in HQ; and Natasha and Wanda were having an unusual girls’ day out. Deciding it was a better time than ever to finally have his thoughts answered, Steve decided to bring the topic that had been plaguing his mind since he first unveiled its possibility to the breakfast table.

 

“You and Wanda—you’re not really twins, are you, Pietro?”

 

There was a long moment of silence in which the dark-haired man simply stared at Steve with calculating eyes and a face void of any emotion. The silence stretched so thinly that it came to the point that Steve was beginning to wonder if he shouldn’t have allowed the question to go past his lips and have his wonders be quenched. Suffice to say, it had shocked him out of his skin when Pietro finally broke the silence and showed his vulnerability by answering something that was quite personal— _too_ personal.

“No. We share the same last name, yes, but we are not siblings. We were best friends in the foster care system where we had been in since we were but little babies—inseparable really, always out for mischief and giving our board mother a hard time, especially when it came to finding us foster parents. It took her a while to realize that she wouldn’t find a couple to adopt each of us separately because we didn’t want to be separated in the first place. It was Wanda and I or nothing. But the older we grew, the harder it was to come across a couple who wanted to adopt a child, much less _two_.” Pietro paused to shake his head and laugh before he carried on. “We were seven when we were finally taken in by a nice couple who treated us as their own. It felt nice, those three years, like someone actually _wanted_ us for the first time in our lives. It wasn’t just me and Wanda anymore; it was me, Wanda, and our parents. For once, we both felt like we were the gravity that children often feel like they are growing up—our parents’ lives revolved around us and not around anyone else’s. They were drawn by our quirks, our childish glee…everything about us, really.”

 

Pausing once more, Pietro took a moment to take in some of his morning drink. Steve waited patiently for the man to continue speaking, not even the slightest bit hungry, what with his curiosity finally beginning to be satisfied.

 

“Anyway, when we were ten and the earthquake happened, we were lost. We’d always been lost since the beginning, I supposed; but after we were adopted, we’d thought that maybe, finally, we were going to find our place in the world. But peace could only last so long for the both of us, as you already know. And so after that, we just decided to stay together. We were already two peas in a pod, there was no use going our separate ways. Sometime in between all of our running and before Strucker found us…” Shrugging his broad shoulders as if to say ‘the rest is history,’ Pietro leaned back in his chair and took another sip of the black depths of his caffeine.

 

“You fell in love.” Steve supplied, slightly breathless at the story but choosing not to show it.

 

Another shrug and a calculating gaze once more came from the other man. Instead of confirming or denying the statement, Pietro threw a question back to the soldier. “You have experienced love, no, Captain? That is how you know, how you understand.”

 

Momentarily thrown off guard by the question, Steve’s brows furrowed. “Understand what?”

 

“That Wanda and I are not twins at all. You looked in between the lines and knew what you were searching for. I’m guessing…you have been there before. In love.”

 

Steve frowned. “Perhaps.”

 

As silence began to stretch out in between them once more, he asked the next obvious question. “But do you love her?”

 

Pietro smiled wryly. “What we have…it cannot be quite described by that four-letter word that is so often overused but little understood. It is nameless and just a bit like... _love_...but perhaps Wanda and I just never had the time to fully put it down in words. See, what you don’t understand, Captain, is that love...it is like a city on cigarette. The more you inhale it, the more you are required to exhale it so that you do not end up choking on it. It is like they say—you allow the smoke to curl into your body and wrap its claws around your lungs, even if you know it will only end in disaster and to your detriment. But you allow it anyway, because for those few blissful moments before reality truly sinks in, everything is at peace and there is something to look forward to. So you keep lighting stick after stick, until you aren't even aware of your need any longer. You just do it. And you need it, at least you think you do, in order to live; but it is, in all actuality, slowly killing you. And that kind of thing…there is no room for that in our lives, Captain. We cannot afford it.”

 

Steve regarded the younger man with curiosity. “You said ‘city.’ City on cigarette. Why is that? Why not just say ‘you’ or ‘I’ or ‘Wanda’?”

 

Pietro smirked. “Because Wanda is not just somebody to me. She is a whole goddamned universe, wrapped in everything glorious and wonderful. She is precious but she is not fragile. She is strong and her scars breathe stories into mine. She isn’t just one pane of the window for me; she’s a whole door of possibilities. Happy possibilities. Wherever she is, there I’d follow. Because there is a part of her in me, and I in her. Always. And besides, there is more beauty and fragility in the prospect of something so collective, so whole, slowly being destroyed by something it holds dear.”

 

*

 

Later, when everyone is asleep except for him and it’s dark out in all the rooms, Steve sees a light turn on in the kitchen and steps out of his own to see who’s still awake. There are soft voices drifting into the hallway, and the soft, tangy glow of the kitchen lights lick at the hardwood floor.

 

He presses himself against the wall near the border where light meets darkness, and listens in to the voices, which he soon recognizes as Wanda and Pietro’s.

 

There is soft mumbling, the soft clatter of mugs, and then—

 

“I don’t really believe in love, but if ever I were to believe in it, I think it would be because of you.”

 

“Is that a confession, Pietro?” There is a hint of amusement in her voice.

 

“No. It just means that I probably _do_ believe in love. Kind of hard not to when you’re all I’ve had.”

 

“What are you trying to say?”

 

“Nothing much. I love you—nothing much. And that maybe, it’s not so bad being a city on cigarette.”

_fin._


End file.
